By Maya Palit
If you were appalled by the idea of the “anti-Romeo” squads in Uttar Pradesh, the situation outside various colleges in the state has proved the shortsightedness of the measure. Apparently members of the youth group Hindu Yuva Vahini have been harassing women’s male relatives when they come to meet them outside the college gates — so clearly there’s something not quite foolproof about the UP police’s admission to having an expert eye for singling out ‘Romeos’ by the ‘look in their eyes’.
But while Sneha Gupta, the principal at Raghunath College, Meerut, expressed deep regret about the confusion that meant that relatives were hauled up, this was accompanied by the unequivocal declaration that girls having boyfriends while they are doing their undergraduate or postgraduate degrees isn’t allowed by Indian society. Gupta talks about the college stipulation that prevents women from carrying cellphones into the college — the assumption being that they’d spend all their time yakking on the phone and forget all about studying — as being a helpful deterrent for women being distracted by guys. This sounds ridiculous enough, but now the policing of couples outside the college campus is a whole new intrusion into personal spaces.
And with women like Gupta rabbiting on about what women aren’t allowed to do, the already expansive list of restrictions that women in the college have to reckon with is just growing. Sorry, Sneha, but citing obtuse references to what is or isn’t natural to Indian culture just isn’t an effective cover for moral policing and blatant discrimination against women.